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order the tribunal to despatch these cases with all speed. (108)
A more pleasing international episode is connected with the case of Robert Fitzwilliam, an Englishman,
condemned by the Seville tribunal to ten years of galleys and perpetual prison. He was received on
board, February 25, 1578 and, in November 1582, his wife Ellen presented herself in the court of
Madrid, with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to Philip II, representing that the poor woman had
beseeched her interposition, and that the liberation of the husband would be a favor which she would be
glad to reciprocate. Under any other jurisdiction, the granting of such a royal request would have been
a matter of course, but the assent of the Holy Office had to be secured. The existing papers fail to
inform us of the result, but that it was favorable can scarce be doubted, for the devotion of the faithful
wife made a strong impression even on the hardened officials, whose correspondence alludes to her in
terms of respect and admiration. (109) More summary was the process when, in 1572, the Barcelona
tribunal sent a commissioner into French territory on some duty, and he was seized and held as a
hostage for a Frenchman arrested by the tribunal, leading to an exchange of prisoners. (110)
The Val d'Andorra furnished another source of international questions, for the Barcelona tribunal
claimed jurisdiction over it, while Jeanne d'Albret, as Queen of Navarre, held that it was her fief. In
1572, she put a French veguer there to administer justice, whereupon the inquisitors commenced to
gather information about him, as a presumable Huguenot, and the Suprema ordered them to arrest him
if sufficient evidence could be found, but, as the attempt was likely to prove dangerous, it need not be
made unless the viceroy would furnish a sufficient guard, which apparently he declined to do. (111)
All foreigners thus were objects of suspicion, and the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was stretched to the
utmost to prevent their infecting the faithful. In 1572, the Suprema ordered the [461] tribunals of
Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia to see that no Frenchmen were employed as teachers of reading and
writing anywhere within their districts, experience having shown the dangers thence arising. (112)
Intercourse with foreigners was dangerous and was discouraged. In 1568, Inquisitor Moral, in reporting
a visit to San Sebastian, expressed a desire to punish those who received and entertained and had
particular friendship and dealings with French and English strangers, sometimes even giving them
information enabling them to escape arrest, on all of which the Suprema commented by characterizing
these as grave cases, which should have been sent to Logroño for trial. (113) The Spaniard, too, who
went abroad was an object of suspicion, and was held to strict accountability for his acts during
absence. In the Barcelona auto of June 21, 1627, there appeared a merchant of Manresa who, while in
France, had listened to Huguenot preaching and had eaten flesh on Friday, for which he was penanced
in a thousand ducats and was recluded in a convent for three years. (114)
That, under these influences, coupled with the growing poverty of Spain and the curse of its debased
currency, the number of resident foreigners diminished greatly after the opening of the seventeenth
century, may be assumed from the reduction in the cases of Protestantism in the records. Those of
Toledo, from 1575 to 1610, show a total of forty-seven, of which the last one occurred in 1601, while
those from 1648 to 1794 contain only eleven. (115) In Valladolid, the reports of twenty-nine years,
between 1622 and 1662, show only eighteen cases. (116) In the Madrid tribunal, from 1703 to 1751,
there is only a single case of a "Huguenot." (117) In the sixty-four autos celebrated by all the tribunals
between 1721 and 1727, there are only three cases. (118) In Valencia, between 1705 and 1726, there was
but a single case--a Calvinist who spontaneously denounced himself. (119) Scattering and imperfect as
are these statistics, they suffice to indicate how rapidly the number [462] of foreign delinquents fell off,
after the year 1600, and that this was not the result of progress in enlightenment and toleration we shall
see hereafter. It was simply that the Inquisition had succeeded in its efforts to limit intercourse between
Spain and its neighbors, and to isolate it from European civilization.